A Wanderer in FlorenceLucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall)
History
A Wanderer in Florence
Lucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall)
Art -- Italy -- Florence; Florence (Italy) -- Description and travel
The right wall, as one faces the window (whose richness of coloured
glass, although so fine in the church as a whole, is here such a
privation), is occupied by scenes in the story of the Baptist; the
left by the life of the Virgin. The left of the lowest pair on the
right wall represents S. Mary and S. Elizabeth, and in it a party of
Ghirlandaio's stately Florentine ladies watch the greeting of the two
saints outside Florence itself, symbolized rather than portrayed,
very near the church in which we stand. The girl in yellow, on the
right of the picture, with her handkerchief in her hand and wearing a
rich dress, is Giovanna degli Albizzi, who married Lorenzo Tornabuoni
at the Villa Lemmi near Florence, that villa from which Botticelli's
exquisite fresco, now in the Louvre at the top of the main staircase,
in which she again is to be seen, was taken. Her life was a sad
one, for her husband was one of those who conspired with Piero di
Lorenzo de' Medici for his return some ten years later, and was
beheaded. S. Elizabeth is of course the older woman. The companion
to this picture represents the angel appearing to S. Zacharias, and
here again Ghirlandaio gives us contemporary Florentines, portraits
of distinguished Tornabuoni men and certain friends of eminence
among them. In the little group low down on the left, for example,
are Poliziano and Marsilio Ficino, the Platonist. Above--but seeing
is beginning to be difficult--the pair of frescoes represent, on the
right, the birth of the Baptist, and on the left, his naming. The birth
scene has much beauty, and is as well composed as any, and there is
a girl in it of superb grace and nobility; but the birth scene of the
Virgin, on the opposite wall, is perhaps the finer and certainly more
easily seen. In the naming of the child we find Medici portraits once
more, that family being related to the Tornabuoni; and Mr. Davies,
in his book on Ghirlandaio, offers the interesting suggestion, which
he supports very reasonably, that the painter has made the incident
refer to the naming of Lorenzo de' Medici's third son, Giovanni (or
John), who afterwards became Pope Leo X. In that case the man on the
left, in green, with his hand on his hip, would be Lorenzo himself,
whom he certainly resembles. Who the sponsor is is not known. The
landscape and architecture are alike charming.
Above these we faintly see that strange Baptism of Christ, so curiously
like the Verrocchio in the Accademia, and the Baptist preaching.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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